White out

Air ambulances facing challenges getting into smaller airports during the winter

By Shayna Wiwierski

Winter time in Alberta can be rough. Since the province has over 4.3 million residents, many of which live in smaller rural communities, it is important to have medical services that can reach these municipalities.

AHS Air Ambulance flies to many regions in the province and air-transports residents to nearby hospitals. A lot of times lives really are at risk in these situations and having access to air ambulances really is the difference between life and death.

“Air ambulance safety is paramount to Alberta Health Services. Our air ambulance operation relies on accurate and timely runway maintenance and condition reporting in order to safely land and take off. In Alberta, municipalities are responsible for airport maintenance, infrastructure and runway condition reporting. AHS works continuously with our airport partners to ensure continued aviation safety,” says Alberta Health Services in a written statement.

So, what happens when winter conditions affect the arrival of these aircrafts?

James Ogilvie is the airport manager at the Whitecourt Airport and says that some of the main issues for smaller airports in the province is that they aren’t Transport Canada certified so they don’t have a way to report the conditions on their air strips. The Whitecourt Airport is certified so they have to issue a Runway Surface Condition (RSC) report, which they do first thing in the morning, and depending on the weather, several times throughout the day. The RSC helps pilots know what kind of weather they are flying into.

“The fact that these small airports don’t have anyone who can issue a condition report [is a problem],” says Ogilvie. “With small, local airports, some are registered, some are not, some have people that maintain them and some have people that, you know, cut the grass once a year or plow the snow once a year kind of thing.”

Ogilvie says that in the summer months, landing an air ambulance isn’t an issue, even in the rain. In the winter time, because of the snow and ice, as well as temperatures that can go from really cold to mild weather in the span of a few hours, that can often create a problem and a hazard for aircraft. In Whitecourt, they haven’t had any issues so far, however, Ogilvie does mention that lack of funding for smaller, municipalityowned airports is definitely a big issue when it comes to this concern.

Kenneth Launchbury, airport operator/ safety assistance for the County of Northern Lights, says that at the Manning Airport they mostly have medevacs and fire suppression teams coming into their airport. He says that sometimes the medevacs have a hard time landing in Manning due to weather and thinks that with more funding they would be able to keep the runways open longer.

The Alberta Health Services air ambulance operation relies on accurate and timely runway maintenance and condition reporting in order to safely land and take off.

“Sometimes ice can literally cripple us. If the runway ice is up or if we get freezing rain, not having the funding available [can be a detriment to operations],” says Launchbury. “We have in the past had to turn away some of those [medevacs], which means an extra hour in an ambulance to get to Peace River.”

They have an on-call number in Whitecourt, so if the air ambulances want to arrive in the middle of the night, they are able to call the airport and receive an RSC report. Ogilvie says that although he hasn’t had any issues with getting air ambulances into the Whitecourt airport, when he worked in Fort Nelson running their airport, they would have to call in employees to clear the runways of snow if there was a call late at night. The community was prepared for that cost, but there are many communities and hamlets that aren’t able to handle the cost of having additional staff come in unexpected for a few hours.

“It comes down to the community where the airports are at and if anybody is there. This group of air ambulance people and staff, they do their best to get into these communities and sometimes they just can’t because they can’t fly into something that is unknown,” says Ogilvie. “There are so many factors when you look at these kinds of things. In some cases you have to say ‘look, we can’t get in there, sorry.’ So the community has to figure out a way to transport from wherever they are to a place where they can get into a medevac.”